Treacle Tart

Sugar and pastry. Why not?! :D

My pastry game is strong since I made pastry for custard tarts and lemon tarts already. It seems the trick is to not overwork it. As soon as you've added a couple tablespoons of water, press it together and do not overmix it. Rolling out can only be done two or three times before it stops being flaky.

Pro-tip - use a rolling pin to pick up your rolled out pastry. The pie/tart tin I have was an inch bigger than the recipe called for, so I used all the pastry, rolled out nice and thin, and skipped the lattice affect.

So, I always forget that The Best of Mrs Beeton's Afternoon Tea is very stingy when it comes to tart fillings. The recipe never makes enough to fill it. So, I'd added 50% to the recipe below to start, but quickly realised that the mixture was a) not runny enough and b) simply not enough to fill the dish. So, I just pouring in a crap ton more golden syrup & a few more dashes of lemon juice to try and make more filling. So much that I didn't even bother measuring it.

It wasn't enough. So, I filled half the dish, and the other half I turned into Bakewell Pudding, the next recipe in the book.

Despite the stingy filling amount, it tasted pretty good and not as sweet as I expected. The thin pastry worked out perfectly - no soggy bottoms here! :) Just be aware that you'll need more filling that the recipe below makes. At least double.

Treacle Tart

45ml / 3 tbsp golden syrup

50g soft white breadcrumbs

1 tsp lemon juice

Short crust pastry

150g plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

65g margarine

flour for rolling

Set the oven to 200C/gas 6. To make the pastry, sift the flour and salt in a bowl, then rub in the margarine until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add enough cold water to make a stiff dough. Press the dough together with your fingertips.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly-floured surface and use just over three-quarters of it to line a 20cm/8in pie plate, reserving the rest for a lattice topping.

Melt the syrup in a saucepan. Stir in the breadcrumbs and lemon juice, then pour the mixture into the prepared pastry case.

Roll out the reserved pastry to a rectangle and cut into 1cm strips. Arrange in a lattice on top of the tart. Bake for about 30 minutes.